


How To Be A Good Housewife

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Feminist Themes, Friendship, Gen, I Don't Even Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23411044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: On the boat to Cario, Daisy brings up an article that she read on 'How To Be a Good Housewife' and is decidedly unimpressed.Canon Era
Relationships: Alexander Arcady & George Mukherjee, Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	How To Be A Good Housewife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WritesEveryBlueMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritesEveryBlueMoon/gifts), [Give_Me_A_Karking_KitKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Give_Me_A_Karking_KitKat/gifts).



“Excuse me, little miss, are you lost?” asked one of the passengers, one of the genteel English folks who I hadn’t yet remembered the name of. “Are you working for someone on this ship? Do you need me to help you find him?”

I felt my hand clench at my side and I truly wanted to hit something. Then a hand fell onto my shoulder and I heard Alexander say, “Hazel is my _friend_ and she was just looking for me.”

The man looked astonished, but quickly nodded at Alexander and just accepted his imaginary authority over me as the gospel truth. “Yes, of course, sorry, sir!”

Alexander led me away, towards the railing where Daisy was leaning while Amina and George discussed something.

“It is dastardly unfair!” Alexander said, interrupting George and Amina’s conversation. “Girls are just as clever as boys, and some even more so. Idiotic that the world must be so set on gender, isn’t it?”

“Oh, _isn’t_ it?” Daisy agreed, so caught up in the moment that she didn’t realise what I did—and clearly George did too, judging by how he raised surprised eyebrows at me. She was getting along with Alexander. “It’s all terrible nonsense, that boys should be better than girls. Aren’t Hazel and I perfect examples of just how intelligent girls can be?”

Turning his head away from Daisy (to _me_ , I realised with a jolt), Alexander said, “Yes, I would dare say so.”

“Society even restricts _boys_ ,” I added, swallowing down the lump in my throat.

“It does.” Amina walked up to stand at Daisy’s other side, looking out over the railing. Their arms brushed together, and I saw Daisy start.

With a curt nod, George walked up to stand at Alexander’s side. “Boys don’t cry, they tell us at Weston. Except we damn well _do_ cry, and we get caned for it. At least you girls can use your emotions to make yourselves look silly and unassuming. All Alex and I hear is ‘buck up, boys don’t cry’.”

“How ridiculous!” Amina said, sweeping her dark hair over her shoulder and looking at the four of us with hard and determined eyes. “How on earth does society except us all to get along when all they do is pit us against each other?”

“The other day, I saw an article called ‘The Good Wife’s Guide!” Daisy said, a sour look on her face. She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out neatly-folded article torn from a newspaper. “It’s _ghastly_. ‘There is no life for the working woman’, it says. And you apparently to ‘prepare yourself before he arrives home’, making yourself all pretty every evening for a _man_! Can you imagine being forced into that box, Hazel?”

“I can’t!” I said, my heart growing bitter with the idea of not being able to work as a detective wen I am older, as I would like. “You showed me this article, it said that ‘catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction’. No! I mean, yes, I would like to find love and… and have a husband and be romantic, but I also want to be my damn own person!”

The glowering look on Daisy’s face did not suit her a whit, but I could get used to it. She ought to speak for women’s rights, whip up a crowd into a frenzy and be awed by all. Fitting for someone as passionate as her. “Exactly!” Turning to the boys, who looked torn between agreement and amusement at our fierceness and ambition to change the world, Daisy said, “You know, boys ought to feel this way too.”

“We do!” Alexander insisted, and George nodded.

“Exactly, Alex is right. We see the unfairness and how it caters to men while holding us down, but there’s not a lot we can _do_ until we are older. Well, we cannot vote for women’s rights at any rate.” With a sigh, George leant his elbows against the railing and stared out at the horizon. “Do enlighten me on this article.”

Daisy looked down at the article in her hands. “’His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.’”

I felt myself growing hot with rage. “But that just unfair! It’s not my job to take care of a man, I want to have my own _life_!” How cruel it was for a woman to be expected to perform all day and every day, no matter whether it was to strangers or a man that she loved.

“What utter rubbish,” Alexander said, frowning in distress.

Leaning over Daisy’s shoulder, Amina frowned at the article and said, “This looks like it belongs in the rulebook of a cult!”

“You mean the bible?” George turned to look at Daisy, counting on her reaction. Predictably, she glowered right back at him and he smirked.

“Have you renounced the Church of England?” Amina asked George politely, peering over at him with curious eyes.

“I never followed it.” He nodded towards Alexander. “I can't renounce Christianity when I follow Hinduism. Alex can and has, though.”

“You _what_?!” Daisy blurted, swinging around to look at him.

With a slightly fearful look on his face, he leant back into George and said, “Uh… I can explain?”

“I mean, I don’t… I don’t _like_ the church, and I quietly resent it, but you actually _renounced_ it?” she asked, her mouth gaping open. I was astonished to hear Daisy openly admit her quiet disdain for the church.

“He burnt a bible.”

“Liar!”

“He considered it.”

I laughed and looked at Daisy. “Before someone very religious hears about a boy who could very easily be thrown off the boat burning a bible, let's continue.”

“ _I didn’t actually burn a bible, Hazel_.”

Amina coughed pointedly and looked down at the article. “God, look at this bit. It’s hideous! ‘Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes. They are... ew! They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimise all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.’”

Doing what we were all thinking, Alexander fake-vomited and made us all laugh.

“Gosh, that’s awful!” I exclaimed, my eyes wide. “You’re not so supposed to be quiet and golden and to dress up for your _father_! He’s supposed to… to play with the kids and be fun and daft and enjoyable, not forcing his children and his wife into this freaky caricature of being perfect.”

“Yes!” Daisy said, throwing her arms around my shoulders and squeezing me tight. “That’s perfect, Watson!”

I held out my hand for the article so I could hold it in the centre of the group. “Look here!” Alexander said, pointing to the next one that says ‘be happy to see him’. “Isn’t that ridiculous? If men are kind enough—”

“And women stand up for themselves enough!” Daisy added.

“Yes!” he agreed enthusiastically, and the two of them actually _grinned_ at each other. “If those two things happen then couples will actually love each other, and women won’t have to _follow rules_ in order to be happy to see the man that they’re meant to be in love with!”

“The aliens are upon us and first contact is near, Daisy Wells and Alexander Arcady are functioning on the same wavelength,” George said to me, whispering with an over-exaggerated mime added so that I could hear.

“Yes!” I said, nodding and laughing.

“Oh, how grossly sexist this is!” Amina pointed and read aloud, “’Remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.’”

With a horrified expression, George said, “I shall never marry if this is how I am supposed to treat a woman!”

“You don’t want to marry _anyway_ , George.” Alexander nudged his arm and he grinned.

“True.”

“You don’t want to marry?” Daisy asked, leaning over with a frown. “As in…”

He waved his hands to almost bat away her theory. “No, no, not like _that_ , not like Harold. I have genuinely no interest in romance, at all.”

“No interest?” I asked, frowning. “None at all?”

“Not a whit,” he replied, leaning over to look at the article. “’A good wife always knows her place’. How awful!”

Amina made a disgusted noise.

“Say, Daisy, isn’t your father in the House of Lords?” George asked.

“Yes, he is,” she said with surprise, raising one slender eyebrow. Where was George going with this?

With a scoff, Alexander muttered, “What a load of old and senile fools, the House of Lords.”

I snorted into my hand in a most unladylike way.

“Well, that means that _Bertie_ will succeed him and become Lord Hastings, does it not?” he asked, though it wasn’t a question. Of _course_ it does, and George knows politics enough to figure it out without needing compilation. “He would fight for women’s rights, I’m sure of it.”

It seemed as though Daisy had only just been struck by that realisation, but she shook it off after a moment of reeling and said, “I do think that he would.”

“Daisy once said to me,” I found myself saying, “that Bertie would enjoy being a society wife much more than she would.”

There was a moment of silence, then Amina chuckled, and Alexander suddenly barked out a loud laugh and facepalmed at his own thought. Amina and Daisy looked at him as if he had grown an extra head, while George nudged him and raised an eyebrow. The instant the two boys made eye contact, there was a moment of understanding and both were _gone_ laughing, doubled over and laughing loud enough to attract us attention from other passengers. While Alexander’s laugh was wonderful to hear, the embarrassment at the stares far outweighed that.

Flaming red at the attention, I frantically shushed them and buried my face into my hands. “Oh my, you two are… quite something,” Amina said, giggling in a way that had Daisy glancing at her before turning away with spots of colour on her cheeks.

“Whatever had you laughing like _that_?” Daisy asked in accusatory tones.

Waving off the question with a wave of his hand, Alexander chuckled and said, “Mental image.”

Despite being British, George is the more forward of the two when it comes to embarrassing things, evidenced by the times when we have detected small cases together on exeat weekends. Alexander will awkwardly stutter out that they saw something, while George laughs, puts a hand on his shoulder and say, ‘We saw two of the suspects kissing.’ That is why I was not surprised when George frankly said, “Alex just pictured your brother _dressed_ as a society housewife.”

That set all of us off laughing again, this time without a care in the world. Even Amina, who had been so awkward and on the edge of conversations, was laughing louder than Alexander. Once we all calmed down, George leant past Alexander to whisper in my ear, “Does Amina know about Daisy’s brother?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

George straightened up, winked at me, and said, “I’ll do you one better than that: Bertie being a society housewife for _my brother_.”

A smile twitched at Daisy lips, considering whether or not to say something that may be questionable. Eventually, she decided on it because she looked at me with twinkling eyes. “The article did say, and I quote, ‘be a little gay for him’. I know that it means happy but the new and _modern_ connotations…”

Alexander pressed his hands over his mouth to stop himself laughing aloud again. “You need to _stop_. All of you, just stop.”


End file.
